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Links

Unix supports two kinds of link files--a hard link and a symbolic link. A hard link is actually a file with the address space of some ordinary file's data blocks. Once a hard link is established to some file, it becomes indistinguishable from the original. It is like having two identical copies of the same file. If you modify one, the other is modified, etc. On the other hand, a symbolic link is just a reference to another file. It contains the pathname to some other file. If you remove the file it points to, then the symbolic link points to a non-existent file. Hard links are created with the command ln. To create a symbolic line, use ln -s. For example, to create a symbolic link of your USENET directory into you mail directory for use with MH, you would say

ln -s News Mail/news

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